Christina Rossetti: A Literary Biography

Because of the new appreciation for this highly accomplished work, and also because, through her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina is so closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites and their superb art and bohemian lives, there had been a resurgence of interest in this enigmatic writer.

Here we learn of the deep sexual passions and ambivalence of her young adulthood; the men she chose and later denied; the warmth of her family life; her close ties to the grand literary figures of Victorian London; the religious devotion that suffused her later years; and her frustrated ambition to fulfill her life as an artist and a woman. Drawing on unread works and newly available letters, Marsh also makes sense for the first time of Rossetti's adolescent breakdown and recurrent depressions.